It's supposed to be fairly rare. The spawn rate is determined while factoring in things like zone population (including how many people are coalesced cross-realm). Competition is to be expected.

These are things to consider when frustrated by not catching a rare spawn within the first few hours it starts spawning for the season.

I got mine from server hopping for a non CRZed server, a friend flying a lowbie tauren to silithus to check. Lo and behold, noone else in the zone and just a single guardling on a step. Which I snagged. Unfortunately not one for him as well. At least its not a terribly good battlepet, which just would 'encourage' people to spawncamp them to find a rare. Though thats what battlestones is for.

But I do think its a rather unpleasant way to end a metaach that they -KNOW- a lot of people have been waiting to finish for their zookeeper title. Combined with it only having a small area it can spawn in and obscenely lenghty spawntimers. Yes, I checked today at midnight, not a single one appeareing either on my home server or the nonCRZed one, so it appears to have no set respawn timer like the Restless Shadeling. But if you find one, be nice to the rest of the collectors and leave, most is only concerned about finishing the meta ach, than its worth as a battle pet.

Its not the minfernal at all. Just a lot of people trying to get it right now. Keep in mind that no one has been able to get this pet since pet battles started, so there are A LOT of people interested, which you even said.

By September, these poor things are going to be very lonely with no one visiting them.

But I do think its a rather unpleasant way to end a metaach that they -KNOW- a lot of people have been waiting to finish

Things are always worse at the start. For pretty much anything. Isle of Thunder, Molten Front, new expansion, new rare spawns, etc. So they just design things for what it will be like later, what they want it to be long term. Because that is what matters. In a few days or weeks, it'll be no different than the owl was for most of its 3 months.

Luciandk wrote:Well they do have a rather long spawntimer just like the Minfernal, making it rather limited to whom who can finish their meta ach at all and forcing the server hopping behavior.

This is nowhere even remotely close to Minfernal's timer. Minfernal's timer is some 18 hours estimated. Guardling is estimated at about 3.

As a previous poster said, this pet is basically Snowy Owl 2.0, not Minfernal 2.0. Snowy Owl at the start was very hard to come by, but by about December it was easier and by January they were as common as any other pet in Winterspring. My guess is this one will be no different. By August you will buzz by AQ and probably see a few up any time of day.

OK. I was in the zone camping and actively seeking spawns. I literally watched four people capture Qiraji Guardlings within thirty minutes, before managing to capture one myself. I wasn't hearing people brag in chat, I was targeting a spawn and seeing someone get to it before I did, or watching someone pet battle and able to view which pets they had fighting.

KittyKat wrote:OK. I was in the zone camping and actively seeking spawns. I literally watched four people capture Qiraji Guardlings within thirty minutes, before managing to capture one myself. I wasn't hearing people brag in chat, I was targeting a spawn and seeing someone get to it before I did, or watching someone pet battle and able to view which pets they had fighting.

So, where is this info about a 3 hour respawn timer coming from?

From people sitting in the zone for hours at a time without seeing any spawn.

There's a difference between "supposed to be rare" and frustrating game design. Frustrating game design is saying we're ok with having 100's of people farming the same location for hours, days, months, years...etc...because...we want it to be rare. Not frustrating game design is when its rare but you're only competing with a few people because you chose a server to begin with that is not high pop - just medium.

Zarhym's response.You make a good point in your first couple of sentences, and that's something we're evaluating. That said, I don't agree with your conclusion that the "good game design" option is the one where the world is just under populated to the point that competition isn't much of a factor. Having low-pop realms wasn't a design decision -- it's a symptom of numerous variables. It's not acceptable for us to say that game design should be such that players can decide how rare something actually is by choosing the most accommodating realm to play on.

What we want to do is continue to ensure the world feels populated, but that seeing people around you doesn't always feel like a negative thing. You've seen some of this in the way we've been experimenting with mob tapping the last couple of patches. Seeing people from your own faction in the world, especially, should be more of a positive thing. It's part of the fiction that you're supposed to be allies, not nuisances to each other.

We don't have any specific plans to share for how we might change the way rare pet spawns work, though competition is likely to remain an inherent factor. But we'll continue to look for ways we can mitigate some of the annoyances of competing for some types of rare spawns with large numbers of players.

It's important to note, however, that tinkering with these types of design decisions requires a metaphorical scalpel, when most of the feedback we get is akin to demanding the use of a butcher knife. No, we're not going to hastily redesign entire systems in the game because people are interested in catching a rare spawn, and can't all seem to succeed within less than 24 hours out of the (approximately) 2160 hours it has a chance to spawn this year.

Edit: I -REALLY- hope they get this right, or its going to be downright unpleasant when Virtual Realms goes live.

This pet is easier to get than many many other pets out there (and no, I don't have one yet). I don't understand the crying. As has been said multiple times, in a few weeks these things will be lonely from lack of attention.

I must admit the whining and complaining on the warcraftpets wall posts is starting to annoy me. People have no patience. I don't have my guardling yet. Probably won't do for another couple of weeks. And it is seriously not an issue. Really, it won't hurt if you don't get it instantly. People expect to be handed things on a platter these days but where is the fun and excitement in that??

Mehetabel wrote:I must admit the whining and complaining on the warcraftpets wall posts is starting to annoy me. People have no patience. I don't have my guardling yet. Probably won't do for another couple of weeks. And it is seriously not an issue. Really, it won't hurt if you don't get it instantly. People expect to be handed things on a platter these days but where is the fun and excitement in that??

I think the complaints about players essentially griefing collectors are valid concerns.

I mean, it was heartbreaking for me to witness an Unborn Val'kyr die as a casualty of war when two players started to PVP fight over it. So I can imagine how enormously frustrating it must be when people go out of their way to kill both players and pets.

If anything, I'm glad that everyone here on WarcraftPets can express their anxiety and frustration in a mature manner.

People saying they have Guardlings unattended need to invite me over to their server. I have been camping here for hours only to see very few spawn. I had to give up on my normal PvP server because it is literally impossible to get it without being attacked and pulled out of the pet battle. I have a level 1 (now 3 from flying here) on a PvE sever, and I basically cam camp one spot hoping it spawns. I am all for making this a rare spawn, but being able to be attacked out of a pet battle is very frustrating to the point where i a just going to give up.

Oh yeah Quin, totally agree with you there. I really feel for people on pvp servers particularly. It's the complaints about the respawns etc that have gotten to me, from people who don't like that a pet is a little bit rare and expect/demand to be able to get it within 5 minutes of them spawning.

I have my Qiraji Guardling. I consider myself extremely lucky to have gotten it, doubly so as it is even a decent breed. I was there at the wall just before midnight. There were so many people there, it was ridiculous. I saw maybe half a dozen spawn (at most). That first spawn reminded me of nothing so much as the Wanderer's Festival Hatchling spawn.

I had originally planned on browsing the breeds once I had one for the achievement, but I will not be back. My original plans were based on the belief that the spawn would be similar to that of the Snowy Owl... the other seasonal pet.

...but the Snowy Owl spawns all throughout Winterspring and the Qiraji Guardling only spawns in a tiny area of Silithus. That, plus the reports of the long respawn timer seems excessive to me. If the respawn rate were something like half an hour, I would feel that was reasonable... but I have read reports of the pet not respawning for 14 hours on some realms.

I repeat, I have the pet... I am even happy with the breed I got, but I still feel that it is not fair for those who do not yet have it for the respawn time to be so long.

I just recommend people avoid the pvp servers while searching for the Qiraji. I got mine on a pvp server, my old home server (V-Co), but the general chat was full of several people complaining about being killed, having their pet killed, etc. Most of these people were not max level, some were even level 2! Of course they'll be killed. That's the nature of pvp servers, people grief and try to start world pvp battles. They find the new spot to go, find where people will be out in the world, and they kill the opposing faction. Especially when it's in such a small area. Especially when it's new.

The Unborn Val'kyr didn't cause these issues to this degree because you had to search an entire continent. Griefers would have to 'work' to find you. The Guardling spawns in such a small area that's it's very easy for players to hang out and kill others, kill pets, and do what pvpers do.

I followed some advice from a player on a forum and made a Horde DK on one of the low populated, non CRZ, RP-PvP realms (Scarshield Legion-EU in my case). On Friday night, very late on, after I'd got the DK to Orgrimmar I flew down to Silithus and found no other players round AQ and 6 Guardlings up. No decent quality ones, but I managed to get a Common. A friend tried it on the Saturday, during the day, and by that time, either because it was a weekend day or people had picked up on the tip to go to these realms, there were a lot of people about, and high level players were one-shotting lower ones of the opposite faction, presumably to lower the competition.

I agree with many who've said don't stress about this pet, it'll be here for months and eventually interest will wane and it won't be too hard to get, but also appreciate those who don't like the griefing and selfishness we can find out there. I think I was lucky to nip in and take advantage of the tip before it became too widely known.

I had the idea to help my guildies in that I could get the DK to Silithus and invite them to a team so they'd get to that realm, but I guess lots of others had the same idea. I'm not into PvP at all, so would never attack a player clearly after a pet, but not everyone feels the same and see it as part of PvP, so live with it. I did choose to go to a PvP realm to get my pet, so can't really argue with that.

It's just a shame that only some realms like these aren't subject to the player bulge of CRZ. Wish Blizzard would find some way round this. Making the Guardling spawn across a much wider area would have helped, so people aren't concentrated in one small location. But as has been said by Blue posts, Blizzard don't think the complaints are justified, and yes, the Guardling will be around for a while. If in two or three months' time there are still a lot of players who haven't been able to get the pet, then there's a problem.

I was shocked to see the number of people angry over the pet collectors going to non-crz servers to look for pets. One such person saw it as pet collectors where taking away from the server economy by doing this. Since we only come for the pets we do not add to community by putting flawless battle stones on the AH.

While I can understand the anger at having people come in a ruin one of the few perks of being on a low popular server it is still not fair to grief people because you don't agree with how they are choosing to play. When I first started playing both of the servers I picked to play on were low-population servers at the end of BC. Now with crz and people that love erp ( ) the servers are now high population to full on any given day. I love my servers and I have a wonderful guild and good friends on there so I really don't want to change but I do miss the days of no-crz sometimes. The people that are angry on non-crz make it so that I don't want to stay there and become a part of their server community.